Why do so many Americans continue to support a president who has been shown to be dishonest and unreliable in every way and at every level?
“Debating the Trump Presidency” with Charles Kesler and Jonah Goldberg
“Debating the Trump Presidency” with
- Charles Kesler of Claremont McKenna College and
- Jonah Goldberg of National Review.
Public debate took place on October 12, 2018, at the University of Notre Dame.
Presented by the Constitutional Studies and Tocqueville Programs at Notre Dame and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
My Comments:
President Trump couldn’t have written that sentence about “prejudice”!
Charles Kesler makes the mistake of misattributing to Trump the words of the presidential speech-writers: (Starting at 15:15 min)(But of course, it is highly unlikely that Trump wrote that sentence or would even be capable of writing that sentence. One can tell that Trump’s speech writers wrote it because the voice of “Scripted Trump” sounds very different than RealDonaldTrump.)Counter example: Has patriotism ever left room for prejudice historically?
To quibble with Trump’s speech writers a bit:If one examines History, does one ever find patriotic men whose hearts left room for prejudice?I can agree with the writers’ quote if one stipulates “true patriotism“, but I don’t feel as though Trump promotes “true patriotism”. True patriotism:
- Is Selfless
- Is Humble
- Abjures Divisiveness
- Honors Civility and preserves government institutions that maintain it
- Pursues the Common good
- Is Motivated by high ideals, not power, bigotry, attention, or fame.
- Pursues shared power, with checks and balances
- Looks for win-win agreements
- Respects boundaries and limits
- Pursues Liberty and Justice for all
- Wishes other countries well (does not demean them, as nationalist do)
- Values dissent in the pursuit of a more perfect union
Is Donald Trump a self-reflective man?
Charles Kesler also imagines that Donald Trump is capable of serious self-reflection: (15:41 min)I think that is the standard that he would repair to in his moments of most serious self-reflection.
From everything I’ve read, Donald Trump strikes me as someone who actively avoids serious self-reflection. In an interview with a biographer, he said:
“No, I don’t want to think about it,” he said when Mr. D’Antonio asked him to contemplate the meaning of his life. “I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see.”
Imagining that Trump would engage in serious self-reflection about “prejudice” is only slightly less plausible than imagining that Trump maintains a prayer journal.
Kesler is deceiving himself with “IdealizedTrump”
In my view, Mr. Kesler is deceiving himself by imagining an IdealizedTrump who embodies those qualities he wishes to see in a President, rather than the RealDonaldTrump. Even the semi-presidential tweets found on Trump’s twitter account are likely made by staff. (how to tell)
Clueless Versus Trump
Apple will not be the only multinational that will soon bring back gigantic profits to take advantage of new low repatriation rates. Microsoft holds $146 billion in overseas earnings, Pfizer $178 billion, General Electric $82 billion, Alphabet $78 billion, and Cisco $71 billion, according to estimates from the Zion Research Group. The total stash is about $3 trillion — by one measure nearly three times what it was just a decade ago.
.. the damage their hubris does to the anti-Trump case.
.. But how can the critics who previously assured us that Trump’s election would cause certain calamity now explain that he’s nothing but a lucky bystander to forces beyond his control?.. The truth is that it’s hard to account exactly for why the economy does well or poorly from one year to the next. But it’s also true that the president has been nothing if not aggressive in his efforts to remove regulations, cut taxes and promote American business (not least his own), and animal spirits on Wall Street have responded accordingly... Democrats are placing a large bet that it’s a political showdown they can win. But what they are mainly doing is wrecking their chances of retaking the House or Senate by appearing to put the interests of DACA’s immigrant “Dreamers” ahead of the rest of America... Donald Trump is a profoundly defective person who nearly every morning does grave political self-harm with no assistance from his opponents. But he is also president, and normal Americans — that is, those who hold the outcome of the next election in their hands — do not want him to fail.. Wouldn’t it be smart of all of Trump’s opponents to show they are superior to him in the former? And wouldn’t a good way of doing that be to abjure the latter, even if it sometimes means giving him some credit?